Dehumanization of women’s bodies: During a crisis

 The dehumanizing of women’s bodies: During a crisis                 

Operating in this society as a woman exposes me to countless insecurities which revolve around my physiological being. There will always be a looming threat and the fear of an existential threat for me as a woman, in this society due to the patriarchally manufactured hierarchy that exists. When I was growing up, I constantly had to think about the limitations and restrictions that were placed on me. For instance, something as simple as deciding what to wear became almost a household decision. From censoring what I wanted to say, from being told to sit in a certain way, from being a “good girl” I somewhere felt the hardships that lay ahead of me. 

Being an IR student, I was introduced to various theories and its theorist giving their perspectives on feminism and security issues, etc. Furthermore, we were also introduced to Ken Booth in the class. In his book Security and Self Reflections of a Fallen Realist, he looks at the concepts of "I," "me," and "we."  Booth recognizes that while “me” is an aggregation of social circumstances, “I” is the active agent who reacts, and the "me" is the identity ascribed to an individual by the profession. Ken Booth gives us a detailed account of how the self governs our understanding of the world. He begins as a realist but soon becomes unhappy with Realism's theoretical assumptions which he connects his evolving ideas to his self-development by saying that people grow and evolve themselves over time. 

In my previous blog post, I had discussed the Yemen crisis and its relativity to security, In this blog post, I would like to further delve into the nuances of feminist security studies and talk about it in more detail. As I mentioned in my previous post, Yemen ranked last in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap index for 13 consecutive years.

Women have been severely affected by the Yemeni conflict which has had a dreadful impact on all civilians. Women's vulnerability to violence has been exacerbated by negative gender stereotypes and patriarchal attitudes, as well as a biased legal system and economic inequity. Citizens are suffering from a severe economic dilemma, shattered infrastructure, and several other issues as a result of the fighting. Due to societal gender conventions, women have had limited mobility which has indeed resulted in the issues of lack of access to food, water, sanitation, and health care services that have steadily exacerbated as the war continues. Since the conflict began in 2015, it has led the country more to a socioeconomic catastrophe. The conflict in Yemen threatens to wreak havoc on women's rights, leaving them vulnerable to assault and extortion. Yemen's patriarchy is well-rooted, which has drastically limited women's quality of life and is constantly striving for their rights against some of the world's most abhorrent regimes.

Women are considered second-class citizens in Yemen, even marital abuse is not specifically addressed by law due to scare of being arrested or abused most cases are left unreported. If we apply the analytical lens provided by Lene Hansen, In situations of violent conflict, women have often had to struggle with gender-related security concerns. Addressing this less-discussed subject correlates with the Copenhagen School's theory of shifting away from the traditional notion of international security while taking into account that women all over the world are influenced as individuals, not just as a collective.

Furthermore, another analytical lens we can use to understand the perils of the Yemenese women is what Cynthia Enloe suggests that modern militarization has the ability to radically alter society. The basic premise is to view militarization as a multi-faceted process rather than a single event. Militarization is described by Enloe as a "socio-economic process," which is demonstrated in the reading. Although the world has altered and adjusted ideas of "liberal progress" structurally, I believe that men and women implicitly agree to the idea of feminine subservience even today. 

Another impactful factor of the Yemen problem is the recognition that sexual violence takes multiple forms, including rape, forced prostitution, marriages, genital mutilation, and forced nakedness. Sexual violence in war zones is just too frequent not to be part of a wider political scheme, hence a "weapon of war." In understanding this phenomenon, it must be grounded in a gendered view of a conflict zone. This must account for not only labor but other aspects of women's lives like physical assault.

The Yemen crisis brings into focus the sort of atrocities women have to go through. Different walks of life bring out different forms of discrimination against women. On a personal note, As an International Relations student, I have become more aware of the theoretical underpinnings and perspectives that various security approaches have to offer. I feel that given my knowledge about this I’m able to comprehend how security needs to be ensured not just in the commonplace but also in the cases of international conflict. 

References:

Booth, Ken. Security and Self: Reflections of a Fallen Realist. Routledge, 1997. 

Enloe, C. H. (1989). In Bananas, Beaches & bases: Making feminist sense of international politics. essay, University of California Press. 

Hansen, Lene. ‘The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School’. 2000. Millennium 29 (2): 285–30

Amnesty International. (2021, October 11). Yemen: One of the Worst Places in the World to be a Woman.